Furnace installation in Pennsylvania

We install furnaces, but we would rather first tell you honestly whether you need one. Plenty of the systems we are called to quote on need a repair.

When replacement is genuinely the better spend

• A cracked or failed heat exchanger. Not repairable, and a combustion safety issue.
• A major component failure on a furnace past fifteen to twenty years. Putting a new control board or gas valve into a furnace near the end of its service life rarely pays back.
• Repeated failures in one season. A third repair in a winter is telling you something.
• A furnace badly oversized for the house. Common in homes that have since been insulated or had windows replaced. An oversized furnace short cycles, wears out faster, and heats unevenly.
• Standing-pilot equipment running at low efficiency where fuel costs have made the gap worth closing.

Sizing: the part most often done badly

A furnace should be sized from a heat loss calculation for your actual house — its square footage, insulation, window area and type, air leakage, orientation and the local design temperature. That is a Manual J load calculation, and it is not the same as a rule of thumb per square foot or simply matching whatever is being replaced.

This matters in Pennsylvania because so much of the housing stock has been modified. A 1920s house that has since been insulated and had its windows replaced may need substantially less furnace than the one sitting in the basement. Replacing like for like perpetuates an error that could be decades old.

Efficiency, and when it pays

Furnace efficiency is rated as AFUE, the share of fuel energy that becomes useful heat. Mid-efficiency units run around 80 percent and vent through a chimney or metal flue. Condensing units run in the 90s, extract additional heat by condensing water out of the exhaust, and vent through plastic pipe out a sidewall with a condensate drain.

Higher efficiency is not automatically the right answer. It depends on your fuel cost, how long you will be in the house, and what the venting change involves — which brings us to the issue most quotes gloss over.

Ductwork

A new furnace cannot fix bad ducts, and a high-performance variable-speed blower is particularly sensitive to a restrictive duct system. We check whether the existing ducts can carry the airflow the new equipment needs, especially the return side, which is undersized more often than the supply. Where a house had ducts retrofitted into a building designed around radiators, that check matters even more. See ductwork repair.

What a proper installation includes

• Heat loss calculation and equipment selection discussed with you, not decided for you.
• Correct gas line sizing and a measured gas pressure check at the appliance.
• Venting installed to the manufacturer's instructions, with condensate drainage and freeze protection where relevant.
• Return and supply connections made properly and sealed.
• Combustion analysis and safety testing before we leave, including a check on other fuel-burning appliances sharing the space.
• Permit and inspection where your municipality requires it. Pennsylvania has no statewide HVAC contractor licence, so requirements are local — we handle whatever your township asks for.
• Airflow set and the thermostat configured for the equipment, including correct heat pump or dual-fuel staging where applicable.
• The old equipment removed and disposed of.

Should you consider a heat pump instead?

For some houses, yes — particularly where you also need air conditioning, or where the alternative is expensive electric resistance heat. Modern cold-climate heat pumps work in this climate, and a dual-fuel setup pairing a heat pump with a gas furnace suits a lot of Pennsylvania homes. We will give you the comparison for your actual house and fuel costs rather than pushing one answer. See heat pumps.